ing reflections. He could not help
admitting to himself that of all the women whose beauty had captivated
his eyes, not one had seemed to be a more exquisite embodiment of faults
and fair qualities blended in a completeness that might realise the
dreams of earliest manhood. Is there a man in any rank of life that has
not felt indefinable rapture in his secret soul over the woman singled
out (if only in his dreams) to be his own; when she, in body, soul, and
social aspects, satisfies his every requirement, a thrice perfect woman?
And if this threefold perfection that flatters his pride is no argument
for loving her, it is beyond cavil one of the great inducements to the
sentiment. Love would soon be convalescent, as the eighteenth century
moralist remarked, were it not for vanity. And it is certainly true
that for everyone, man or woman, there is a wealth of pleasure in
the superiority of the beloved. Is she set so high by birth that a
contemptuous glance can never wound her? is she wealthy enough to
surround herself with state which falls nothing short of royalty, of
kings, of finance during their short reign of splendour? is she so
ready-witted that a keen-edged jest never brings her into confusion?
beautiful enough to rival any woman?--Is it such a small thing to know
that your self-love will never suffer through her? A man makes these
reflections in the twinkling of an eye. And how if, in the future opened
out by early ripened passion, he catches glimpses of the changeful
delight of her charm, the frank innocence of a maiden soul, the perils
of love's voyage, the thousand folds of the veil of coquetry? Is not
this enough to move the coldest man's heart?

This, therefore, was M. de Montriveau's position with regard to woman;
his past life in some measure explaining the extraordinary fact. He
had been thrown, when little more than a boy, into the hurricane of
Napoleon's wars; his life had been spent on fields of battle. Of women
he knew just so much as a traveller knows of a country when he travels
across it in haste from one inn to another. The verdict which Voltaire
passed upon his eighty years of life might, perhaps, have been applied
by Montriveau to his own thirty-seven years of existence; had he not
thirty-seven follies with which to reproach himself? At his age he was
as much a novice in love as the lad that has just been furtively reading
_Faublas_. Of women he had nothing to learn; of love he knew nothing;
and